The Day in Technology History is a podcast detailing what happened in Tech. This is a daily podcast, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. We look at stories of the Information Age, dates of artifacts, creation of Silicon Valley and the history of companies like Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Commodore, Facebook, Twitter and more. It’s a Computer museum in a podcast.
1983 – Microsoft releases the 2-button mouse. It was designed for Microsoft Word 1.0. The first mouse would fail, but the second version in 1985 would solidify the mouse on PC’s. Of course, Microsoft launched Microsoft Word v. 1.0for $229.
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 2
2011 – The first tweets on the raid came from Sohaib Athar, a.k.a. @ReallyVirtual. At the time he didn’t know what he was tweeting about, just there was a helicopter hovering over Abbottabad at 1AM. Shortly after, Twitter went a buzz because inside that bunker was Osama Bin Laden. However, it was determined the first tweet actually came from @keithurbahn (aka Keith Urbahn, Chief of Staff for Donald Rumsfeld).
So I’m told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn.
This caused Twitter to explode and soon after, 14.8 million tweets were posted even before President Obama could take the podium to address the nation.
1964– John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz run the first BASIC program at 4 AM in Darthmouth. The duo used a General Electric 225 mainframe computer and ran a simple compiler program.
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 1
1993 – There is a bug in the Automated Retroactive Minimal Moderation (ARMM) program on a Usenet. It ends out sending 200 copies of a message to news.admin.policy. Joel Furr, a user of the newsgroup, says this is “Spam”. Hence, the term “Spam” is coined.
Wikazine – Full show notes of Technology History for March 31
1951 – John William Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert unveil the first commercial computer, the UNIVersal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC I). The computer was manufactured under the company name of Sperry Rand Corporation for the United States Census Bureau. The UNIVAC will remain in operation through 1963.Univac I was not only the first American commercial computer, but also the first computer designed to computer large numbers. The first contracts for these computers were government agencies, like the Census Bureau and US Air Force. It took almost a year to finally ship the first Univac computer.
Wikazine – Full show notes of Technology History for March 30
1983– Radio Shack introduces the TRS-80 Model 100. It is the first portable computer featuring a 2.4 MHz processor for $799. The portable machine weighed 3.9 lbs.The model-100 was first made and sold as the Kyotronic 85. Tandy Corporation took this small computer over, and sold through Radio Shack.Over 6,000,000 units were sold worldwide.
2000 – BeOS version 5 was launched. Code named “Maui”, this OS is often cloned for the GUI desktop for GNOME. BeOS went to ver. 5.1 before it was acquired by Palm. There is an Open Source version called “Haiku”.
1996– Tony Hsieh and Sanjay Madin found themselves in a very exciting spot. As the web was starting to grow, they put together a business plan for a powerful advertising cooperative. The result – LinkExchange was born. Of course, LinkExchange was then bought out by Microsoft for $265 million and the rest is history.
2001 – The reason why I decided to highlight this event is to make you aware that Tablets are not a new thing. Computer companies have been trying to perfect the tablet for many years. in 2001, for example, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates introduces the Tablet PC initiative. Using a Crusoe processor and the XP OS, he shows off a touch screen with Microsoft Notebook handwriting recognition software. This 3 pound revolution weighed only 3 lbs and would cost the average consumer $2,000 – 3,500.